Fireworks report probed after Allentown house fire

Shortly after an Allentown woman heard fireworks at the rear of her rowhouse Wednesday afternoon, a neighbor banged at her front door shouting, "Diane, your patio is on fire!"

Diane Willenbecher of 520 N. Front St. looked out back at 5 p.m. and saw the covered patio engulfed in flames, which were beginning to burn the enclosed back porch.

"My son said, 'Mom, go out the front,'" she said. "He grabbed the parrot and got my granddaughter down from the second floor." She, her son Brian Willenbecher, her 12-year-old granddaughter Nikayla Schaffer and the parrot escaped safely.

City firefighters rushed to the house and within 20 minutes they had extinguished the blaze, which gutted the back porch and left the back patio in ruins, its roof collapsed in charred debris.

The outer wall of the second floor also was singed in the blaze.

City Fire Marshal Fred Scheirer was on the scene immediately to investigate what caused the fire. Three hours after the fire, city police also were called to the house after a resident reported money was missing from a room.

Just as the flames were brought under control, emergency radio reports revealed officials wanted to talk with a girl who might know who was playing with firecrackers.

"Someone was shooting off fireworks a half hour or three-quarters of an hour earlier," Diane Willenbecher said. "I think that's what started it. I heard firecrackers out back, but I don't know who did it."

A Whitehall Township woman who was driving through said she stopped near the Front Street house in time to see a power line sparking on a chain-link fence next to the burning patio.

"I saw the fire on my way to the store," said Ashanti Garrison, who was with her two sons. "We came over and it started sparking. There was a boom, so we ran."

A PPL Utilities crew switched off the power. A PPL employee with thick gloves was on the scene at 5:35 p.m. inspecting the power line that appeared to have burned through during the patio fire.

Willenbecher, her son and her granddaughter – and Willenbecher's daughter Kimberly Schaffer, who came home after the fire -- were not allowed to stay in the house Wednesday night.

Fire Capt. Thomas Carl said that, except for the back porch, most of the house was in good shape, but because natural gas and electricity had to be disonnected during the cleanup, the family will have to wait to return.